Page 74 of Pride
“Correct. We’ll have to infiltrate and access the system in person. But we prepared for it this time.”
The Deadly Seven had brought back a number of replicate tanks from the recent warehouse battle to study at their headquarters. Well, Flint had studied them while Parker had rebuilt AIMI and recovered from his amputation. Julius and that Faithful from a few days ago had controlled the replicates using a smart device or tablet. It was possible that the entire community of replicates was centrally controlled. The entire world’s worth of replicates might be disarmed by a single kill code.
An idea came to him, and he landed the drone near where the worker had gone to sit—next to a row of computers.
“AIMI,” he said. “Use the drone to read data from nearby computers.”
“Putting feelers out now.”
“Upload to the cloud.”
“Sure.”
“ETA?”
“T-Minus twenty minutes.”
“Let me know if you find anything interesting.”
“Such as?”
“Blue prints. Base schematics. Prisoner manifests.” It was unlikely they’d find the kill code on the system, but they would take what they could get.
“Understood.”
Parker stood back with Alice and waited. After a time she whispered to him, “AIMI is incredible.”
There was a time when he would have made some kind of arrogant comment about his genius, but he knew it took more than one person to make AIMI what she was today. She was a family effort. Hell, shewaspart of the family.
“I’ve found something interesting,”AIMI said.
“What is it?”
“There are three more sub levels from this one. Each one houses a different species of bio-weapon.”
“Different species?” For a moment his pulse hammered, thinking there were more warped creations in the Syndicate cannon they hadn’t come across yet.
“Correct. Animals. Beasts. I believe they’re programmed to hunt sin.”
Parker exhaled. They knew about those. “They’re caged?”
“Correct. There are also mechanical weapons of a similar technology to your arm. Except an entire exoskeleton.”
“Interesting,” he murmured. “Perhaps they’re for enhancing the replicates.”
“Or for regular humans,” Alice offered.
He nodded. “What else, AIMI?”
She paused.“I know where they’re keeping prisoners.”
Alice’s gaze whipped to Parker’s.
“Is there a manifest?” he asked AIMI.
“Record keeping is lacking, but I found something.”She rattled off a few names, none of which he knew. But there was one unidentified female. Whether it was Daisy, Prudence, or someone else, they wouldn’t know until they found her.
“Directions?” he asked.
